Blue Kayak

As the days draw in and the mornings are darker, we have been sleeping a little longer, lingering a little longer over our coffee, and taking a lot longer to do much of anything else. The newspaper unhelpfully tells us that we shouldn't be deceived by the cooler weather, that fire season is not over until it rains, and the 'worst could be yet to come'.  As we were going to bed last night, we said that we should get up and out early, without reading the paper, and take Spike to Spring Lake. It's been months since we've been there, and aside from his trip to the swimming lagoon on Sunday, Spike has never been there.

Despite being overcast and the coldest morning of the year we got ourselves dressed and out of the house by 8am with the promise of coffee at Trail house at the end of the walk. It was nice to get back there again, and  because of  fewer dogs and people, there was more wildlife. A big flock of geese hung out in the swimming lagoon which had been  teeming with dogs on Sunday. All the quail who used to live under our olive hedge and in the neighbors' juniper have obviously moved to Spring Lake where they were all congregated on the lawn. Two women stood by the lake with their binoculars trained on the pileated woodpecker in a redwood tree.

Spike was so beside himself with all the new smells that he behaved himself quite well when a few other dogs passed, and he has become well adjusted other people and didn't feel compelled to charge at them in order to get to know them. He ran madly back and forth across the trail, nose to the ground super excited by all the new smells. A flock of turkeys was planning their day on the lawn next to the exit as we drove out.

We felt that we had earned our coffee by the time we got to Trail House and agreed that we would make an effort to do it several times a week the way we used to. Added motivation is that the coffee is delicious and the young women who work there are always happy to see us and love Spike.

I drove across town to see the dermatologist, a relatively new one who I like much better though she is even farther away. While she took her pieces of flesh, and said she was 99% sure that the two lesions she was biopsying were squamous cell carcinomas, my specialty, we discovered that we are neighbors. She and her husband live near Dana and Jim, and they all know each other because their children are the same age and went to school and played  soccer together. At least two more appointments will be necessary to remove the lesions and subsequent stitches...although if I can get her to do the one on the back of my leg first, I can takeout the stitches on one just above my knee myself....

Too bad she doesn't make house calls....